Too Late for Regrets
by Stormcloud Empath
Summary: Dark, angsty and slightly disturbing reflections from Sirius. Set during OotP, just after Harry shows up in the fire. Mostly deals with Sirius and Snape's mutual hatred.


Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling.

**Too Late for Regrets**

Dear Harry,

No.  That wouldn't do.  I don't want to address this to Harry, partly because there's no way to send it to him and partly because I'm not sure I want him to know.

Dear Remus,

Naw, that wouldn't do either.  Moony knows me well enough; he understands all of this already.  There's no point in addressing it him.

Dear Severus,

Ha.  Like he'd read it anyway.  If he deigned to actually read it, I'm sure it'd be the funniest thing ever.

Ah, I know:

Dear Sirius,

Yeah, it sounds pathetic, me writing a letter to myself.  But it's only me that I'm writing this for, so why bother someone else with the burden of reading it?  And besides, cooped up in this thoroughly decadent shrine to all things Dark, I have been a pathetic figure lately.  So why not milk this for all it's worth?  That's what James would do, I'm sure.

But getting to somewhere in the vicinity of my point, I'll come out and admit it:  I'm obstinate, stubborn, selfish and a creature of habit.  Then again, I'm also clever and brave.  I'm funny, too, or at least I used to be.  Azkaban turned me into more of a cynic, but I can still elicit a few laughs now and then.  Sometimes I'm even sensitive.  The point is, I'm not about to win a nice award, because let's face it, I'm not the world's nicest person.  I never have been, and thank Merlin I'm not now, because I've never had to wipe a fake, plastic smile off my face after telling a blatant, sugarcoated lie.  I'm proud of that.

But here's something I'm not exactly proud of.  In fact, I'm truly ashamed of it.  I have had to wipe a fake, plastic frown off my face after telling a blatant, cruel lie.  And there's more: I'm ashamed that, lately, I haven't been sorry in the least.

Snape is a snivelling, raw-minded fool.  He might not have been before, but he sure as hell is now.  The problem: so am I.  

There's a lot to be said for James, both good and bad, and all arguably true.  Like I told Harry, we were all idiots at fifteen, James being the worst, then Wormtail, then me and finally Remus.  I don't blame Moony so much, for being afraid to stand up to us.  He was, or rather is, a werewolf.  We were his only friends, and if he had got up his courage and told us how wrong we were, he might not have had any friends.  I think he admires Hermione, with her house-elf obsession, because while it hurts her a lot to have Harry and Ron angry at her, she does what she feels is morally right despite the possibility of alienating her best friends.  But Moony's different.  It's not like Hermione never had any friends before she met Harry and Ron-at least, I sincerely doubt it.  I don't really know, as I've never asked her.  But Remus is a werewolf, and had never been accepted anywhere, or by anyone.  I don't blame him half as much as he blames himself.

It's much easier to fault Wormtail and myself.  To remember Peter is sickening: I can just see him in my mind's eye, laughing like a hyena, idolising Prongs as he tortured Snivellus.  I blame myself slightly less because at least for me it wasn't a sadistic veneration of the torture itself.  I just hated Snape and wanted the bastard to suffer.  I didn't really think about what was happening.  Maybe that makes me worse than Peter, I don't know.

But I remember well enough the infamous prank.  I hit rock-bottom that night.  I didn't consciously want to kill Snape, at least that wasn't what I was feeling in the moment.  But something in me surfaced. . .I don't know what it was, but it must have been there.  Something inside me wanted Snape dead, and it was then that I came to a realisation: In some ways, I'm no different from the rest of this slime I call my roots.  That same night something else surfaced in James, when he went to save Snivelly's life.  It was only a few days before the Christmas holidays, but Dumbledore decided to suspend me and send me home in isolation.  That was my last night at this so-called home.

I showered, gathered some prized possessions and left, though not before threatening to torch Phineas Nigellus if he breathed a word of where I was going.  He did, of course, seeing as how I, being gone, couldn't exactly make good on my threat.  My mother burned me off the tapestry, but that's more a point of pride than anything else.

There was never any doubt, I don't think, that I was headed for the Potters'.  But I didn't want to get there before Prongs did, so I haunted the Leaky Cauldron a couple of nights.  Eventually it was safe to go, so I did.  I was welcomed into a new family, and I turned over a new leaf.  It may sound cliché, but that particular change of scenery really did make me a better person.

I changed in a lot of ways after that, eradicating the urge to hex people for the fun of it, refining my sense of humour to exclude cruel and unusual punishment, deflating my head and just generally learning how to treat people.  My own arrogance still existed, and continues to exist, but I felt a sharp decline in that, too.

One thing never changed, though, and that was my attitude towards Snape.  As I said, I'm not proud of this.  I never apologised, and I didn't stop hexing him, or calling him Snivellus.  I know full well he didn't deserve any of it.

Snape became a Death Eater, briefly.  I still don't know what brought about his epiphany, but that doesn't really matter.  Point is, he was a Death Eater.  He was a Death Eater because we-Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs-we made him a Death Eater.  Indirectly, we're responsible for the deaths of any Muggles, Muggle-borns or other victims of pure-blood hysteria Snape may have killed while in Lord Voldemort's service.  Knowing that makes me sick.  It actually makes me want to cry, sometimes.

I wish I could take back everything I ever said to Severus Snape. . .and I mean everything, because I don't think I've ever spared a kind word for him.   Some days I think I'll do just that. . .and then the greasy Slytherin himself shows up, and he pulls an act that just burns me up.  He didn't deserve what we said and did to him then, but he sure as hell does now.  Whenever I see him, I'm suddenly not so sorry any more.

I went to Azkaban for the murder of my best friend and his wife.  I served twelve years in the custody of the foulest creatures on this earth for a crime I didn't commit.  All the while, Snape kicked back, relaxed and became more and more of an insufferable specimen of a man.

I've paid for my sins.  I'm not sorry.  My heart bleeds for the poor hygienically-challenged kid I helped demoralise, but I don't give a rat's arse about his present-day counterpart.

Warmest regards,

Padfoot 


End file.
